Ask HN: Is a Biological Compiler feasible?

6 points·hsikka··4 comments

I keep hearing people say it would be super useful to have a design environment for biology, where the output is either a genetic circuit or some other implementable design, but I never really see anything that comes close. Cello and the folks behind Asimov are an interesting attempt, but I’m thinking more along the lines of Michael Levin’s talk. Does anything like that exist?

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ICYMI, iGEM organization's overall goal and the projects that are carried out as part of the annual competitions are highly related to this topic: http://igem.org/Main_Page

In general, it is hard to find a biological system that will give you a reliable and generic compiler framework (a la LVM) unless you better scope your problem and/or goal; but there are small problems for which we have nice implementations/solutions (a la software design patterns). The challenging part is to mix and match parts that will help you solve specific problems.

So the answer really depends on what you want to do with such a system and what parts of the already available solutions that you don't like.

Thanks for mentioning Asimov. Had not seen this before, and it looks quite promising ;)

One could argue that BioCAD style automation adhering to optimized DNA construction protocols is the only way to do synthetic biology assembly properly.

Automated-design tools that are changing synthetic biology

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07662-w

You may find the film eXistenZ interesting. Basically a biological version of the Matrix.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existenz

i think those are called enzymes

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